A snapshot of the latest roadmap announcements and blogs from Microsoft over the last week and a bit.
- Microsoft Syntex is now available in the non-primary region of multi-geo tenants. Rollout starting now
- Copilot for various Microsoft products have been added to the roadmap, including PowerPoint, Word, OneNote, Outlook. Rollout starts November 2023.
- Insider Risk Management - Progressive alert scoring. User activities that could potentially result in data security incidents will be assessed more frequently within a 24-hour period compared with the current practice of once every 24 hours. Alert insights will now be updated every few hours with this increased frequency, providing designated analysts with timely alerts and continuously evolving insights. Preview available January 2024, with rollout starting April 2024. Details here
- Microsoft Teams: Chat button on missed call activity. A new chat button is added to the activity feed, enabling users to follow up on a missed call and start a chat with just one click. Rolling out November 2023. Details here
- Outlook: Outlook on the web will support S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) signature and encryption as sensitivity label outcomes. Admins can define the label to have S/MIME signature, encryption, or both and emails with those labels will enforce S/MIME accordingly. Rolling out now. Details here
- Microsoft Stream: Add a hyperlink or text callout to a video at specific times. Rolling out December 2023. Details here
- ?Loop components in Teams channels. Rolling out November 2023. Details here
- ?Microsoft Teams: A simplified compose box UI will make it easier to create and send messages. Edit your message, insert an emoji or call Copilot right from the compose box, or click on the plus button to choose from the extended menu of actions. Rolling out November 2023. Details here
- Microsoft Teams: Priority account chat controls. Administrators will be able to manage priority account chat controls using a policy setting. This enables end users to decide how to handle unwanted internal communications. End users will be notified about chats from new contacts, giving them a choice to accept or block the conversations. If conversations are blocked, all future messages from the sender will no longer be received. Senders can be unblocked at anytime by the users with these policies. This feature is available with a Teams Premium add-on license. Rolling out November 2023. Details here
- Outlook: Outlook for Mac will support accounts for Microsoft Exchange on-premises servers. Rolling out July 2024. Details here
- Outlook: Sent messages in the conversation mode can be hidden by updating the settings to exclude them in the conversation mode. Available now. Details here
- Data Loss Prevention: - Microsoft Endpoint DLP Support for Windows on ARM (ARM64). Preview available now. Rolling out January 2024. Details here
- Outlook: Control inbox and calendar sharing options.? Admins will be able to use the Office Policy setting "Turn off sharing recommendation" to prevent users from sharing folders. Rollout starts November 2023. Details here
- Outlook: Message reminders. When Outlook identifies that a user could have forgotten to respond to or follow up on an email message, that email is brought back to the top of the inbox, marking it needing an action. Rollout starting January 2024. Details here
- Outlook: Users will be able to arrange folders in any desired order. Rolling out January 2024. Details here
- Microsoft Teams: Private Line. Users will be able to have a private second phone number that they can make available to a select set of callers to call them directly, bypassing delegates, admins, or assistants. Inbound calls to the private line will be distinguished by a unique notification and ringtone. The private line will support incoming calls only. Rollout starting November 2023. Details here
- Information Protection - Sensitivity labels to protect Microsoft Teams shared channels. Rollout starting February 2024. Details here
- Microsoft Teams: Together mode and content share layout improvement. With the new layout, Together mode will be displayed under the shared content. The users will be able to see the participants in Together mode and shared content simultaneously in a completely new way. Rolling out December 2023. Details here
- OneNote: When creating a new standard channel, a new Notes tab will be automatically created. Each Teams team will have a dedicated OneNote workbook and each channel will have its own section, making it easier on the workgroup to add their notes. Rolling out November 2023. Details here
- Microsoft Teams: Users of Teams Admin Centre will be able to quickly and easily open a private Teams chat between themselves and a third-party app publisher to directly ask questions on pricing, compliance or other topics as they consider the deployment and/or purchase of the app. Rolling out November 2023. Details here
- Microsoft Entra ID Governance Access Reviews no offer the capability to detect inactive accounts effectively. This blog provides a step-by-step guide.
- The October 2023 Exchange Server Security Updates (SSUs) for Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 have been released. Details here
- Skills in Viva has been announced. It leverages the combined power of the Microsoft Graph and skills from the LinkedIn Skills Graph. This providing Viva customers with an improved understanding of current workforce skills. Skills in Viva will not connect individual LinkedIn member data to a user’s Viva skills services. Details are available here
- The public preview of Microsoft Graph Activity Logs has been announced. This adds critical visibility to the current SignIn logs to analyse authentication activity and Audit logs to see changes to important resources. Details here
- Microsoft are deprecating the Exchange Online PowerShell UserPhoto cmdlets. This consolidates user profile photo requests to the Microsoft Graph service, allowing a more reliable profile photo experience, addressing issues with inconsistent sizes and formats, and enabling faster refresh of profile photos across the Microsoft 365 product suite. Details here
- User containment has been added to the automatic attack disruption capability in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team share their analysis of real-world incidents and demonstrate how automatic attack disruption protected our customers by containing compromised user accounts. They also explain how this capability fits in their automatic attack disruption strategy and how it works under the hood
- The MTI team further detail of the automatic attack disruption process for human-operated? attacks here.
- With the future deprecation of legacy APIs, such as Outlook REST API and Exchange Web Services (EWS), Microsoft are publishing a guide to migrate from EWS to Microsoft Graph. The initial parts are now available, and additional publications will be included in the list available on this blog
- Microsoft are working to configure Entra ID so that users receive emails in their preferred language. At this stage it covers Privileged Identity Management, Access Reviews and Entitlement Management. Further details, including the new approach, are available here
- Google continue to crack down on spam and bulk mail. Here's a blog from Microsoft that may help you avoid being on the wrong end of an NDR, by configuring email authentication correctly
- Microsoft Teams admins can now proactively oversee audio, video and application sharing quality for all upcoming meetings of selected users using key telemetry parameters such as latency, jitter, hardware failures which usually affect the call quality experience. Details are available here
- Copilot is the buzzword of the month (maybe the year!!). Here's some details on how Security Copilot can help streamline and increase efficiencies in your SOC
- Are you using Microsoft Lighthouse? Here's a blog from Microsoft on creating custom baselines for your customer's tenants
- The Teams Phone setup guide has been enhanced to provide more guidance. Details of the improvements can be found here
- Here's a deep dive into favouriting files and folders in OneDrvie
- LAPS with Entra ID and Intune is now GA! Details available here, including links to further documentation
- Do you use services that must still support legacy TLS protocol versions but must still meet compliance requirements. Microsoft have collated various documentation links for Azure offerings to help with what needs to be done to ensure TLS 1.2 is preferred in all scenarios